Being enthusiastic after having tested Sabayon fouroh I did an installation on my PC. I'm using Linux for several years and have several systems installed: Debian lenny, Kubuntu, Studio, Mint, Sidux, each on its own partition. All systems use an additional partition for /home. Every Users has its individual name on the /home partition. This went well for years.

But now Sabayon seems to have changed some config files of other users at other systems! Unbelievable ! GRRRRRR. When I try to start one of the other systems at first there is an error message that the kde 3.5 session is not valid any more. Not a big problem, you can reassign the default session. But trying to use the email-client brings a horror. The account is not accessible any more, mails are gone (well, physically they are still there, but as i said: not accessible any more). GRRRRR 2.

And the third thing is: The default startpage of any browser of any user of any other system is set to sabayon! Help me! I want back my controls!!

The best way to share files in my experience is NOT to have a single home partition for multiple Linux installs, but to have an extra partition for user files and directories, like music, documents, downloads, et cetera. Then, just symlink these folders to your home folder and you're done! It has the same efficiency, but you do not risk any Linux to mess up the configuration of another distro - as they all have their own config files, but link to the same user files.

frisil wrote:The best way to share files in my experience is NOT to have a single home partition for multiple Linux installs, but to have an extra partition for user files and directories, like music, documents, downloads, et cetera. Then, just symlink these folders to your home folder and you're done! It has the same efficiency, but you do not risk any Linux to mess up the configuration of another distro - as they all have their own config files, but link to the same user files.

I agree

if people would only work with linux instead of wanting what they expect

By the way, you can also move the .mozilla and .thunderbird hidden folders to your user partition and symlink them to to the home folder of any distro. This way, you have the same firefox bookmarks, settings and extensions and email accounts on any distro, but you never risk any install replacing anything with its own defaults. You can even use NFS if this partition is on another computer, thus you can share user files, firefox data and email accounts with any computer in your house.

One caveat, however: If you have multiple users, make sure they have the same uid on any distro you're using, or they might not be able to access their folders.

And a second one: if you have your laptop share email accounts via NFS with your home server, of course it has to be connected to your hone network in order to access them. A start script that looks for your home server and uses a local copy of your mails if no server is found (by deleting all email symlinks and creating new ones on each startup, linking to the folder on your home server if it's there or to a local copy if it's not there) might be a good workaround.

frisil wrote:The best way to share files in my experience is NOT to have a single home partition for multiple Linux installs, but to have an extra partition for user files and directories, like music, documents, downloads, et cetera. Then, just symlink these folders to your home folder and you're done! It has the same efficiency, but you do not risk any Linux to mess up the configuration of another distro - as they all have their own config files, but link to the same user files.

Yes, thanks. This is a good tip. Will give it a try.But - just to explain : I use different names for each user/distro. So all the config files for different systems are in different folders. No linux before had problems with this.

The problem with sabayon is, that it changes all the prefs.js files it finds. For every user! Not like you would expect!This might be funny if you regard this for firefox only. But to write a prefs.js file which is intended for a browser into a foreign user account AND into its mail directory isnt funny anymore.

Again: I installed it to a NEW username e.g. /home/sabayon/... but it also changed e.g. /home/lenny/...

Excuse me: It is not even a feature....

IT IS A BUG !!!

And are you shure, that the procedure with the symlinks will prevent sabayon from this bug when the corresponding partition is mounted???

I have multiple boot, but i have independent home partitions, and independent partitions. sometimes, even no acess between the linuxes.this avoid the problems also because the documents, packages that are installed in one distro, according to their type, cannot be installed in the other.if you use totally independent systems, if you have problem in one partition or distro, the problem is only in this, and may located and solved.i have until this moment, windows Vista, Sabayon 3.5, Sabayon 4R1, Gentoo, Mandriva Free and Poseidon Linux,in 2 HDDs.all 64 bits systems.working great.

el.mago wrote:But to write a prefs.js file which is intended for a browser into a foreign user account AND into its mail directory isnt funny anymore.

Again: I installed it to a NEW username e.g. /home/sabayon/... but it also changed e.g. /home/lenny/...

Excuse me: It is not even a feature....

IT IS A BUG !!!

And are you shure, that the procedure with the symlinks will prevent sabayon from this bug when the corresponding partition is mounted???JJ

well, I agree on that. If sabayon really does overwrite any .js it finds on any partition it's not just a bug, it's an audacity! However, as Sabayon was the first system I installed on my new computer, I cannot say if it really affects other distros because there were none when I installed. But I simply cannot imagine any Linux would do this, as it would become MALWARE then!

So unless a distro overwites files on any partition without asking (which, as I said, I deem unlikely) it is perfectly safe to symlink to a user partition.

I have installed six more OSes on this new computer and I use them along with Sabayon, and it has never overwritten anything.

Well I use WinXP on one HD and Kubuntu,Mint,Mandriva,Ubuntu,Debian,Sabayon,Fedora,Suse.Slackware and Slax on a second HD. Everything is booting from one Grub bootloader in the MBR. I made no separate home partitions for any Linux but made a large FAT partition on that disk and dump all the stuff I want in there and it can be read by Win and all the linux distros. Very easy to use and no risk of one distro interfering with another.